- This article is about the neighborhood in Los Angeles. For the Contra Costa County town, see Brentwood, California.
Brentwood is an upscale neighborhood on the west side of the City of Los Angeles.
Annexed in 1916, Brentwood is bordered by Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, Bel Air, UCLA and Westwood Village. The approximate boundaries are the 405 freeway on the east, 26th Street (and the Santa Monica city line) to the west, and Wilshire Boulevard to the south. Among the main subdivisions are Brentwood Park, Brentwood Heights, South Brentwood and Westgate; Brentwood Park was (uniquely for Los Angeles) designed around several large traffic circles, a handful of which remain.
Major thoroughfares are San Vicente Boulevard, which is the "Main Street" of Brentwood, Barrington Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. San Vicente is divided by a wide median on which stand many large coral trees. The median and the trees replaced a derelict Pacific Electric Railway track. The trees are Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument 148. Brentwood boosters have adopted the silhouette of a coral tree as a de facto town logo.
Popular spots include the Brentwood Country Mart, an early farmer's market complex built in 1947; the Brentwood Village, a cramped and/or cozy shopping district near Sunset; and more recently, Brentwood Green, a village commons created from the playground at Brentwood Science Magnet Elementary School. There is also the private Brentwood Country Club, the 2.7-mile-long boundary of which is a popular local jogging route.
In addition to Brentwood Elementary, the area is served by Kenter Canyon Elementary School and Canyon Elementary School, all three of which are part of LAUSD. Locals attending public school usually go to either Emerson Junior High or Paul Revere Junior High; the local public high school is University High School (named for nearby UCLA, formerly Warren G. Harding High). Depending on their address in Brentwood, a local student may also attend Pacific Palisades High School, in Pacific Palisades, CA.
Brentwood is also home to several private schools, including Brentwood School, Archer School for Girls (located in the historic Eastern Star Home) and St. Martin of Tours Catholic School.
Local traditions include the Maypole erected each year on the lawn of the Eastern Star Home, and the annual decoration of the coral trees with holiday lights. For many years the neighborhood hosted a Memorial Day parade, complete with an elephant named Tiny, but that tradition is now only sporadically practiced. The parade tradition is probably a consquence of Brentwood's near proximity to the Los Angeles National Cemetery.
Brentwood's terrain is mostly flat around San Vicente Boulevard but becomes more rugged as one heads north towards the mountains (especially north of Sunset Boulevard). The far north reaches of Brentwood include Crestwood Hills, an architecturally significant neighborhood born of the mid-century modernist movement.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lives in the hills above Brentwood, as do a variety of other notables, including Phyllis Diller, Angela Lansbury, and Chloris Leachman. Old-time celebrities who had Brentwood residences include Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck. In the 60s and 70s, TV dads,Dick Van Dyke, Don Defore, and Bill Bixby, made their homes in the area.
Bundy Drive in Brentwood was the site of the notorious murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.